OK, I’ll admit it. I’m just trying to get the Religious Right riled up. It’s a hobby of mine.

But I could hardly pass up an opportunity like THIS:

An Iowa evangelical Christian leader stood on stage and told the 1,200 conservatives in the audience and the dozens of reporters that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul had told him he couldn’t be at the event Saturday because of a “family commitment.”

Then the New York Post’s “Page Six” published the news that Paul was in the Hamptons on Saturday with Alec Baldwin. Paul was “among the intellectual elite” at a fundraiser for a library in East Hampton that Baldwin co-sponsored, the columnsays.

It raised some eyebrows in Iowa. Had Paul skipped the Family Leadership summit, an event that served as an early audition for five other potential GOP presidential candidates, because of a family obligation or another reason?

Aides for Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, told The Des Moines Register this evening that Paul and his wife, Kelley, did indeed have a family commitment. It was in New York, and they took one of their three sons with them. The party with Baldwin was just an extra event on the itinerary for the weekend.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m just trying to get the Religious Right riled up. It’s a hobby of mine.

But I could hardly pass up an opportunity like THIS:

An Iowa evangelical Christian leader stood on stage and told the 1,200 conservatives in the audience and the dozens of reporters that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul had told him he couldn’t be at the event Saturday because of a “family commitment.”

Then the New York Post’s “Page Six” published the news that Paul was in the Hamptons on Saturday with Alec Baldwin. Paul was “among the intellectual elite” at a fundraiser for a library in East Hampton that Baldwin co-sponsored, the columnsays.

It raised some eyebrows in Iowa. Had Paul skipped the Family Leadership summit, an event that served as an early audition for five other potential GOP presidential candidates, because of a family obligation or another reason?

Aides for Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, told The Des Moines Register this evening that Paul and his wife, Kelley, did indeed have a family commitment. It was in New York, and they took one of their three sons with them. The party with Baldwin was just an extra event on the itinerary for the weekend.